Women and AI Futures: Beyond the Croisette Cannes 2025
About the Event:
Beyond the Croisette isn’t just another stop on the Cannes circuit. It’s a space for bold conversations, visionary ideas, and intentional connection — beyond the noise, beyond the surface. Expect candor over clichés, depth over buzzwords, and a community committed to reimagining what’s possible.
🗓 Programming Overview
Monday June 16
WAAIF KICK OFF
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🍸 Kicking Off with Candor: Marketing, Meaning & the Messy Middle
Before the Croisette sparkles, we’re pouring truth with the award-winning author of Responsible Marketing. Join Lola Bakare for a cocktail-fueled convo on how brands can move from optics to ownership, and why intersectional stewardship is the future of marketing.
Guest of Honor: Lola Bakare
🥂 Intimate. Sparkling. No B.S. Request your villa invite.
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Join our Guest of Honor, Lola Bakare, Award-winning Marketing Strategist and Author, Responsible Marketing, as we kick off Cannes with conversation, candor and cocktails
📍Location: Women and AI Futures Villa: Villa Casalina 4 Avenue Sole Mio 06220 Golfe Juan
TUESDAY JUNE 17
TUESDAY LUNCH SESSIONS
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🌆 Urban Futures: Who Gets to Build the New World?
The next city is being written in code, concrete, and cultural values—but whose? This powerhouse panel will explore who gets to dream, design, and decide what futures get built—from infrastructure to imagination. It’s not just about cities—it’s about justice.
Panelists: Alicia Douglas (Water Rising Institute), Rochelle Haynes (What Works Cities – Bloomberg Philanthropies), and more.
🚪Seats are limited. Request your invitation ROUNDTABLE:
Time: 12 - 1PM
📍Location: Women and AI Futures Villa: Villa Casalina 4 Avenue Sole Mio 06220 Golfe Juan
🎨 Aesthetic Weapons: Taste-Making in the Age of Algorithmic Obedience
Your taste is being optimized—and manipulated. In this mic-drop keynote, Alechia Reese unpacks how sameness is sold as style, and how underground creators are pushing back with chaos, contradiction, and cultural defiance.
Keynote: Alechia Reese (Triggered Media)
💣 Mood boards beware. Request your invitation.
Time: 2:15 - 3pm
📍Location: Women and AI Futures Villa: Villa Casalina 4 Avenue Sole Mio 06220 Golfe Juan
🤖 Why AI Needs Experiential to Get Real — and Experiences Need AI
AI won't win hearts through code alone. This session reveals how emotion-rich, immersive experiences are the missing piece to building trust in AI—and why physical/digital storytelling is the new frontier.
Speaker: Sarah Mehler (Left Field Labs)
Moderator: Natalie Black (Culture x Curate)
⚡️See what experiential AI feels like. Request your invite.
Time: 3:15 pm - 4pm
📍Location: Women and AI Futures Villa: Villa Casalina 4 Avenue Sole Mio 06220 Golfe Juan
TUESDAY DINNER SESSIONS
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⚡️ Radical Redefinition: Work, Media & Meaning in an Age of Disruption
This isn’t just about AI or work—it’s about rethinking value, voice, and visibility in a collapsing world. Join us as we explore what’s displaced, who’s erased, and how we reclaim creativity and inclusion as core infrastructure.
Panelists: Larry Adams (X Stereotype), Liberty White (She Learns AI / WAAIF)
Moderator: Natalie Black (Culture x Curate)
🔥 Step into the redefinition. Request your invitation.
Time: 6pm - 7PM
📍Location: Women and AI Futures Villa: Villa Casalina 4 Avenue Sole Mio 06220 Golfe Juan
🌍 Global Sisterhood as Strategy: How Women Are Building the Next Global Infrastructure
While AI builds tech infrastructure, women are building human infrastructure. In this intimate talk, we explore how global sisterhood is becoming a system-shifting strategy—one built on collaboration, care, and real power.
Speakers: Dr. Anino Emuwa (100 Davos Women), Moderator: N. Liberty White (moderator)
✨ This is more than networking. Request your invite.
Time: 7:15 - 8
📍Location: Women and AI Futures Villa: Villa Casalina 4 Avenue Sole Mio 06220 Golfe Juan
WEDNESDAY JUNE 18
WEDNESDAY LUNCH SESSIONS
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🌀 Psychotechnology: Rewriting Reality in the Age of AI
Forget trends—this is about rewiring perception. Jasmine Bina breaks down the mental models shaping the future and shows how leaders can wield psychotechnology to influence not just markets, but meaning itself.
Keynote: Jasmine Bina (Concept Bureau, Exposure Therapy)
🎤 Get inside the code beneath the culture. Request your seat.
Time: 12:00 PM - 1PM
📍Location: Women and AI Futures Villa: Villa Casalina 4 Avenue Sole Mio 06220 Golfe Juan
🧬 Signal x Shift: Come Feel the Future
This isn't a download—it’s an invitation to co-create. Join Natalie Black and Amy Daroukakis in an unscripted, sensorial session designed to reconnect you to what the future feels like. Less feed fatigue, more full-body foresight.
Speakers: Natalie Black (Culture x Curate), Amy Daroukakis (Culture Connectors)
🌀 Ready to sense what’s next? Request your invitation.
Time: 1:15 - 2pm
📍Location: Women and AI Futures Villa: Villa Casalina 4 Avenue Sole Mio 06220 Golfe Juan
WEDNESDAY DINNER SESSIONS
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🧠 AGENCY ROUNDTABLE: Beyond the Brief – Reinventing Creative Capital in the Age of AI
Creativity is being extracted, automated, and undervalued—and agency leaders are done playing defense. Join this raw, unscripted salon as we challenge the industry's power dynamics and reimagine creative value on our own terms. No slides, no filter—just truth, tension, and the future of creative work.
Panelists: Rachael Hardy (Creative Theory Agency), Sequoyah Glenn (924 CoOperative), Brian Fitch (The Carbon Thread), and more.
🔒 Private session. Request your invitation.
Time: 5:00 pm - 6pm
📍Location: Women and AI Futures Villa: Villa Casalina 4 Avenue Sole Mio 06220 Golfe Juan
🏀 Power Plays: Athlete IP, Identity & the New Rules of the Game
Athletes are no longer just icons—they’re intellectual property. This dynamic panel unpacks how AI, IP, and identity are colliding to reshape the sports industry and how athletes are rewriting the rules of ownership, influence, and agency.
Panelists: Brian Fitch (The Carbon Thread), Ifeoma Ike (Pink Cornrows), Alechia Reese (Triggered Media)
🎟️ Game on. Request your spot.
Time: 6pm - 7pm
📍Location: Women and AI Futures Villa: Villa Casalina 4 Avenue Sole Mio 06220 Golfe Juan
THURSDAY 6/19 - 11:00 - 11:30am
👩🏾💻 Code, Culture & Correction: Confronting Gender Bias in AI
This isn’t your average AI panel—it’s a reckoning. Bias is being coded into our future, and it’s time to course-correct. Join a bold community convo on policy, platform shifts, and rewriting the algorithm for equity.
Speakers: Shelly Zallis (The Female Quotient), Alicia Douglas (Water Rising Institute), Liberty White (She Learns AI / WAAIF), + WAAIF Delegation
⚖️ Request your spot at the FQ Lounge.
THURSDAY DINNER SESSION
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Closing Keynote: What Makes Us — Us
As algorithms accelerate and sameness spreads, how do we hold on to what’s human? Alejandra Salazar, Founder & CEO of CROING—one of the 0.1% of creative agencies founded by a woman—takes the stage to challenge how we connect in a world ruled by AI. This is a call to the brands, marketers, and makers who don’t just want to reach people—they want to move them. From cultural fluency to real-time relevance, this is where belonging meets innovation.
🧠 Insightful. Bold. Unmissable.
Speaker: Alejandra Salazar, (CROING Agency)
Time: 5pm - 6pm
📍 LOCATION: Women and AI Futures Villa: Villa Casalina 4 Avenue Sole Mio 06220 Golfe Juan